Article

1. La quale fu cantata molto bene – The performances of Alessandro Striggios’ monumental 40-part compositions in Munich 1567/68

   Bernhard RAINER

   Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance

   Keywords: 16th c. instrumentation, 40-part compositions, Alessandro Striggio, Cantorey, Ecce beatam lucem, Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno, Transposition.

   In the 1560s Alessandro Striggio composed monumental works such as his Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno à 40 and a 40-voice motet, both of which can be proven to have been performed in Munich in 1567 and 1568. Analysis of the performing forces of Munich’s Cantorey of this time concludes not only that the instrumental participation of these performances must have been significant, but also that the works were transposed downward. Furthermore, a hypothesis is proposed that the Munich performance of an untitled 40-voice motet in 1568 involved Striggio’s Ecce beatam lucem à 40, which itself may constitute a contrafactum of Ecco si beato giorno, a madrigal that circulated in copies during the decade.

2. Between sins and virtues. A look at the feminine condition in medieval daily life through sacred and secular songs

   Antonio Celso RIBEIRO

   Original title: Entre Pecados e Virtudes. Um olhar sobre a condição feminina no cotidiano medieval a partir de cantigas sacras e seculares

   Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance

   Keywords: Eroticism, Female condition, Joglarezas – Soldadeiras, Middle Ages, Social class, Ŷawari.

   The present work intends to briefly analyze the role of the medieval woman from her social class whether she is a well-born woman, or a slave, God fearing or mistress of her needs and desires, lover or loved one, courtesan, intelectual and artist and their interest-relationships with eroticism. Therefore, we will briefly discuss on these roles and their implications for society at the time, especially for the joglarezas/soldadeiras and ŷawari – slave-singers specially trained within Arab-Muslim culture, outlining the boundaries between public and private spaces and between the sacred and the profane.

3. Saint Augustine and the definition of Music as Scientia (De Musica I, IV, 5)

   Luís Carlos Silva de SOUSA

   Original title: Santo Agostinho (354-430) e a definição de Música como Scientia (De Musica I, IV, 5)

   Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance

   Keywords: Modulation, Music, Order, Reason, Saint Augustine, Scientia, Transcendence.

   The objective of this work is to analyse the use of the term Scientia in the definition of Music proposed by Saint Augustine in the work De Musica (I, IV, 5). The Music, one of the seven Liberal Arts, was understood by Augustine as a manifestation of th order of audible realities. The Music had as its object not exactly modulatio, but bona modulatio. Many animals are capable of modulation, they fellow numerical laws: but, for Saint Augustine, the Music was a Scientia bene modulandi, and it assumed a specific, transcendent telos (τέλος). The term Scientia could not be dispensed with, since ignorance of the bona modulatio, as an exercise of Reason, could cause disorder in the use of song.

4. Sodomites before the Inquisition

   Rocío RODRÍGUEZ SÁNCHEZ

   Original title: Los sodomitas ante la Inquisición

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 

   Keywords: Inquisition, Sodomy, Spain.

   Sodomy in the kingdoms of Spain was punishable by burning, according to civil laws. Only in the Crown of Aragon did the Inquisition in the courts of Barcelona, Valencia and Zaragoza. Those guilty of heinous sin were tortured, burned at the stake, publicly flogged, sent to galleys, or exiled. Many tried to get rid of these punishments by presenting the most diverse and incredible excuses.

5. Beauty and Ugliness as Aesthetics Aspects in Medieval Music: Order in Disorder

   Antonio Celso RIBEIRO

   Original title: Beleza e Feiura como aspectos estéticos na Música Medieval: a Ordem na Desordem

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 

   Keywords: Beauty, Disorder, Medieval Music, Order, Treatises, Troubadours, Ugliness.

   Through a brief examination of anonymous music treatise La Doctrina de Compondre Dictatz, this work intends to expose some aesthetic aspects of the medieval songbook, confronting its main genres and making some considerations about beauty and ugliness in the songs of troubadours.

6. Abacus Schools. The invention of a language

   Giovanni PATRIARCA

   Original title: Escuelas de ábaco. La invención de un lenguaje

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 

   Keywords: Abacus Schools, Accounting, Economic History, History of Education, History of Mathematics, Linguistic Evolution.

   Abacus schools are fundamental for mathematical, geometric and economic literacy as well as for the scientific development of these disciplines with their own sectorial language and style. The Abacus treatises constitute the basis of a solid administrative, accounting and commercial training. In a fruitful exchange with all expressions of society, they become the main engine for the consolidation of a new linguistic koiné.

7. Textile crafts regulations in the Portuguese urban areas, 14th-15th centuries

   Joana SEQUEIRA

   Original title: A regulamentação dos ofícios têxteis no mundo urbano em Portugal, séculos XIV-XV

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

   Keywords: Common good, Crafts, Guilds, Regulation, Textile.

   This article examines the regulations concerning the different textile occupations in Portugal between the 14th and 15th centuries, with a specific focus on those emanated by the municipalities of Lisbon, Porto and Évora. To understand the specificities of the textile sector in contrast to other crafts in different spaces, the regulations are classified and analysed according to its contents. Since these contents vary depending on the authors of the regulations, the analysis considers the socio-political context of its production. I. Introduction: Crafts regulation as a research topic II. The Portuguese legal context and the available sources III. The textile sector in Portugal in the Middle Ages IV. The contents of regulations: setting wages V. The contents of regulations: weights and measures control and quality control VI. The contents of regulations: activities settings and sanitary conditions VII. The contents of regulations: levies VIII. The silences of the regulations IX. Conclusions.

8. The Double Effect Doctrine in Thomas Aquinas’ Just War

   Marco Alexandre RIBEIRO

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

   Keywords: Culture and mentalities, Ethics of/in War, Medieval Philosophy, Thomism.

   The use of war to expand the limits of Christianity or the limits of the power of the Christian Church was, from an early age, regular. This theme, which over the centuries has been the subject of intense debates among intellectuals who tried to justify the morality of this war or, by contrast, served to develop various attacks on the Church, is the focus of the present work. In this way, we seek to understand here the development of the concept of just war in St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae, it’s way of justifying the use of war, the moments when its use is legitimate, the applicability of the Double Effect Doctrine in this concept and also the influence that his thought exercised on chronologically closer thinkers, but also contemporary philosophy, using to this purpose, the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, a striking figure in twentieth-century philosophy, to understand the pertinence of the medieval theologian thought in this matter.

9. Evangelization and Translation into Nahuatl: Holy Scripture in New Sapin in the 16th Century

   Verónica MURILLO GALLEGOS

   Original title: Evangelización y traducción a la lengua náhuatl: las Sagradas Escrituras en la Nueva España del siglo XVI

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

   Keywords: Evangelization, Holy Scripture, New Spain, Translation into Nahuatl.

   This chapter presents the linguistic, theological and cultural mesh found in the transla-tion of excerpts of the Holy Scriptures into Nahuatl that were carried out by religious missionaries in sixteenth-century New Spain. It aims to consider the translation of the Bible into Indoamerican languages as an extension of the European problems of that time, signaling the caracteristics and difficulties that they acquire within the context of the evangelization and colonization of the American indigenous people.

10. Erasmus editor of Saint Jerome: the Opera omnia (1516)

    Inmaculada DELGADO JARA

    Original title: Erasmo editor de san Jerónimo: las Opera omnia (1516)

    Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

    Keywords: Erasmus, Fathers of the Church, Humanism, Saint Jerome.

    The biblical and patristic project of Erasmus began in 1516, after a long maturation period of at least 15 years (from 1500 to 1516), with the publication in that annus mi-rabilis of the Novum Instrumentum and the Opera omnia of Saint Jerome –two milestones in his biblical and patristic project that will continue for twenty years with the edition of more than a dozen Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin–. At this time he had already discovered that the Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church (espe-cially Saint Augustine, Chrysostom, Basil, Origen and Saint Jerome) could renew what he understood by theology: he does not want a scotist, nominalist, thomisttheology, that is, that of the recentiores, but a true theology, the vetus theologia or later the bibli-cal philosophia Christi, centered on the gospels and apostolic letters. But to reach this, we not only have the texts of the Scripture, but also the Fathers of the Church –and among them the greatest Latin Father, Jerome–, from which to take in the purest mes-sage of the Scripture, a redditio ad fontes, which he will defend throughout his life as the foundation of the theological renewal that he perceived as profoundly necessary in his time. The study deals with his herculean nine-volume edition of Saint Jerome’s Opera omnia –the first and most important of his many editions of the Fathers of the Church–. Because we anticipate that, with Erasmus, “the first patrology” was born. Its great editorial and translating task will facilitate the dissemination of patristic thought that will influence studies on New Testament philology as well as the development of dogmatic theology and Christian piety itself.